Where’s Eric?
Elsewhere. None of your damn business, imaginatory questionaire, be gone with you. I’m Kyle David Paul, just Paul to those who read this column ( I do appreciate the pimps, dearly I do) and will do my best this week to cover the column in the interim.
Nobody died or retired this week that I know of so I’m already screwing up the format of the show. Not that there isn’t plenty of really horrible news stories out there to bring the nihilist out in all of us.
THE PIMP SECTION
Liquidcross presses the cute button.
Fernandez pushes the Saturday news button on Monday.
Scisso pushes the Nostalgia button.
Basilo pushes the “random things on television and/or the internet” button.
Sutton pushes the screen caps button.
Ring of…what?
So there’s a brand new ‘fed’ out there called Ring of Glory, created by Vince Russo, who in the interim of writing the whitest-trash of wrestling angles found Jesus and is a new man. His fed consists of about a quarter of the TNA locker room, the same announcers as TNA, and likely the same production staff when/if they get a show together. The layout of the website prominently features AJ Styles, which would lead us to believe that he’s going to be the big player there, as well as in TNA.
Now, as funny as the image of one of these wrestlers stopping midmatch to outwardly wonder “Would Jesus hit the chinlock or go for the split legged moonsault?” is, one has to wonder how exactly the teachings of the bible will factor into a wrestling promotion. Wrestling promoters (not to mention the wrestlers themselves) are really only one generation away from territorial carnies, so I can’t exactly put my, ahem, faith into this particular breed of human being in any way “Good” or “Moral” or “Purged of all sins.”
Unless, of course, we’re talking the south, which is likely where the show will run. Unless, of course, we’re talking about a Republican-led majority of folks down there who are pretty high on the Jesus Juice at the moment. Unless, of course, we’re talking about CARNIES who will MAKE A BUCK over just about anything, because at the root of it, wrestlers and wrestling promoters are not out to save anyone, they’re out to make money. And Vince Russo is taking the easiest route to money there is; religion.
People get the entertainment they deserve. That about sums this up, I think.
The Short Form
Staying true to form, a giant headache came over me just around show time. Shiny.
Shelton Benjamin & Big Show over Chris Masters & Gene Snitsky (Pinfall, Chokeslam on Snitsky) – Fun tag match in an era with no tag division. What made it so fun was that each character was exactly where they should be. Shelton and Big Show should be good guys. Masters and Snitsky should be bad guys. Big show should be booked as if he could beat an army. Masters has an unbeatable finisher and that thing should not be beaten for YEARS, if they can. Shelton is the best “in peril” good guys they’ve got, because there’s literally nothing negative about his character, and everyone can support a complete good guy. Snitsky should scream and snort and spit and grunt every moment of his matches, and if they can pair him with good looking guys like Masters to give an awesome contrast. The thing is, the fed usually screws up all these should‘s, but here they’ve got it, if only for ten minutes this night.
Tatanka over Eugene (Angle-ference – Eugene Gold Medal Invitational Match) – Okay, first off, it’s cute that the timer has half the letters spelled backwards. Secondly, it’s awesome that in the middle of an Indian reservation they had an Indian on hand. Tatanka looked fairly out of practice, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to have a pissed off Kurt Angle stand around at ringside yelling at Eugene until Eugene had the brass to try the anklelock, providing the necessary moment for Kurt to snap and get in there. The fact that Tatanka and Eugene beat up Kurt Angle is a bit of a stretch, but whatever. The mega-intense interview from Kurt after the commercial was worth it.
Rob Conway over Val Venis (Pinfall, Ego-trip) – Conway wrestling with the subglasses ON was cool (as well as when they fell off for no reason and he nearly cried), but other than that this belonged on Heat. There was nothing special wrestling-wise, nothing literally angle-wise, and those two things put together make me think of second-hour Nitro matches where they’d throw people like Fit Finley and Stevie Ray to wrestle for absolutely no reason while pretending that it was for ‘rankings’ or some other crap. To support this theory, listen near the end for the ‘this match sucks’ chant The only thing that truly surprised me was the length of the whole affair.
John Cena over Carlio Carribean Cool (2nd referee, WWE Championship match. Chris Jericho as the special referee) – If the idea was to have Jericho come out and cheat in every way he could possibly dream up, then great, mission accomplished. But Jericho trying to screw John Cena every 30 seconds allowed for little more than a match filled with restholds and punches. There was quantifiably no wrestling here, since every time Cena tried any offence, Jericho would attack. The beatdown following was brutal, though. I love it whenever they use the camera as a weapon.
Angle Developments
Collusionary Actions -Jericho saying things like “Monkeys in the Truck”, “Rap is Crap” and “a night to remember in referee history” make me think he was channeling Nitro circa late 96, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The 180 switch from joking around to being deadly serious did actually give me a little hope they’ll give it to Y2J. That is, until Cena came out and handled Jericho like Austin took care of Foley mid-98. It’s actually very similar, all the way down to the special guest referee-ing up the wazoo. Okay, so Eric is McMahon, Cena is Austion, Jericho is Foley, but who’s Carlito? Pat Patterson? Headbanger Mosh?
636th edition of RAW – Hey, great record, but is it that difficult to beat most dramas when you’re producing 52 shows a year (imagine RAW getting seasonal DVD’s)? After trolling out all the reasons that make Vincent K McMahon great, he comes out and rehires Matt Hardy in a way simultaneously climatic and yawn-inducing. I figured this whole run-in thing would go more than 3 weeks. That’s definitely the biggest reaction the boy has ever got, though. So Matt does his catch-up on the whole story, breaks Kayfabe on the Kane ‘wedding’ thing, and lays out the challenge (that had already been signed for Summerslam) to Edge. Then he says that he wants Edge to die in a car accident. Jeez, boy, keep it down to mortal threats, huh? There’s no poetry in death threats.
Brother, brother brother! – Shawn Michaels dressed up as Hulk Hogan talking to a fake Larry King about Shawn Michaels while making a caricature out of Hulk Hogan while using the same video about Shawn Michaels’ highlights that they used before Wrestlemania with Kurt Angle with a little extra about Hogan at the end. Whew. “After seeing all that brother, I’ve got some major politiking to do, brother.” Haha. Unless Hogan comes out and quasi-shoots at some point, this feud is so freaking one sided it’s not even funny. I’m going to have to disagree with Hyatte on the result of the match though (if not the reasoning he had to bring him there).
Cut the summer – She was cut because she was a foot taller than everyone else. And she looked like the alien robot chick from Mars Attacks. Rob Schneider hasn’t been funny since…um…ever? I’m going with never. Man, those women will dance the second ANY music starts playing, won’t they? And jousting? Please. Ashlee is the only one there with any sort of personality (but they’ll go with Elizabeth I think) , and it’s clear they don’t script these segments, and it’s clear they should, because they’re all very, very terrible and they need the help.
Well, that was…something. My headache didn’t exactly leviate during the proceedings. Eric’ll be back next week.
